ExtractingCloopFilesystems

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Description :

most files you will find on recent LiveCDs (Knoppix...) and distributions CDs (future Mandrake 10.2) are now stored in a so-called 'compressed loopback device', or cloop, filesystem.

that means you can not see or extract the content of those files from Windows (this is not a ISO 9660 CD-ROM image), nor Linux - this is not ext2fs or Reiserfs or xfs either. all you can see is a big file called something like gnustep.mod and weighting 360 Mb or even much more.

usually, you are told to mount them with a special kernel module : the 'compressed loopback device module'. but with coLinux, it can be hard, since co Linux does not currently ship with this module and you can not steal one from another distribution : you have to rebuild it and it does require some knowledge of coLinux rebuidling.

all that, and you just wanted to extract a few files or tried to boot coLinux on this nice file system...

but since we are smart devious, here is what we can do :

while the kernel module is indeed part of the kernel and totally version dependant, you CAN use the compression/decompression part of cloop outside of the kernel : only the mounting/umounting is part of the kernel.

so install the tools for handling cloop compressed volumes, then uncompress your cloop image, then mount it as a regular iso :